


Heroic Effort

by rabidsamfan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (US TV 1954)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:06:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A personality is what we like our friends in spite of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Watson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwkwardAnnie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardAnnie/gifts).



Beryl

When I agreed to share rooms with Sherlock Holmes I thought he might be a pleasant enough fellow lodger. Something like the young officers I had known during my time in Afghanistan. Mind you, I could tell the man was intelligent from the moment I laid eyes on him, but I soon learned that his undoubted powers are coupled with a blazing disinterest in everything he considers peripheral. When he is focused upon his chemical researches, not even news of a murder can distract him. And once he is on a case, no practical consideration – or legal consideration – can either.

Bluff

Holmes is fascinating, particularly when he is drawing some astonishing conclusion from the mud on someone’s boots, but he is not the easiest person to live with. His chemicals occasionally find their way into the teapot, and his violin playing will never count among his achievements. But what I shall never grow accustomed to is his disguises. I never know when the priest , or laborer, or obnoxious sailor, I have just let into our flat will suddenly laugh in Holmes’s voice. It’s bad enough when he does it most times, but to haul me out of my morning bath? Infuriating!

Harry

As odd as the gaps are in Holmes’s expertise, even odder are the gaps which he seeks to fill. Chemistry, criminology, these things make sense, but Holmes is also quite expert in Egyptian Hieroglyphics and house-breaking. That last might explain his immediate fascination with Harry Crocker. Any sensible man would take umbrage at being knocked up by a fast-talking rapscallion first thing in the morning, Not Holmes. He latched on to Crocker’s one great talent – escape – and scarcely noticed anything else. Although given how often Holmes has bypassed normal entrances, perhaps getting out of handcuffs will prove a useful skill.

Ballerina

Holmes’s sense of play can turn up at the oddest times. Even in the middle of the night, he cannot resist tweaking the nose of authority. And mine, too, come to think of it. Lestrade did turn up that night to find out whether I’d murdered the chap who walked off with my hat. I hadn’t, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that Holmes suggested I might climb out the window in my nightshirt to avoid arrest. He does that sort of thing, but he invariably makes up for it. Generally by catching the actual murderer.

Pudding

It would be unfair to say that Holmes is in the habit of keeping secrets. Often, he assumes that I have seen the same things and reached the same conclusions. He likes giving me hints, “to improve my deductive facilities.” But upon occasion he’s chosen to act alone, sending me away, particularly when there’s danger, and that’s much harder to forgive than jokes. I shan’t fall for that sort of fool’s errand again, I can tell you that. Why, if John Norton had succeeded in taking his revenge last year, it would have been the worst Christmas of my life. 


	2. Holmes

Heritage

When I agreed to share rooms with John Watson, I knew that he was many things. A veteran soldier, a competent physician, a bluff and hearty English gentleman of the sort turned out by the dozens from our public schools and universities. I could, with certainty, describe him as amiable, curious, adventuresome, and possessed of both a fine temper and a finer sense of humor. I predicted it would be no time at all before he became interested in my work, and I was correct. What I did not predict was how quickly he would come to save my life.

Ghost

He’s made a habit of saving my life. Indeed, I’ve come to depend upon his doing so. He is not the most observant man in the world – particularly not on a dark night , as that business of the “ghost” of Albert Higgins proved. And he cannot be said to have any great ability to draw conclusions from his observations, a fact that has led me to occasionally indulge in testing the limits of his patience. But give him a situation where immediate action is required and Watson shines. He proved that in the business of Albert Higgins’ ghost, as well.

Train

That reminds me of another life he saved: a small boy who ran away because he didn’t want to go to school and fell into the hands of kidnappers. The case interrupted our holiday, as it happened, and I can’t say that Watson was any too pleased about that. He insists that we… well, never mind. In any case, it was Watson who found a way to stop one of the kidnappers. What has that to do with Albert Higgins, you ask? Nothing but the name Higgins, which Watson bestowed upon me for the next three days. Three _uninterrupted_ days.

Nursemaids

My pranks do not always work out well. Lestrade and I once left him to watch a baby, and my heart stopped when we returned to find the child gone and Watson prone and still upon the sitting room floor. He was not dead, thank God. With care and smelling salts he soon recovered consciousness. But he had failed to protect the child, and the damage to his pride was greater than the damage to his head. I made sure to devise a plan which would soon mend that damaged pride. Even if it meant he would bruise his knuckles.

Exhumed

Watson’s practical streak has occasionally proved vital. Upon learning that we were going to investigate the arsenic death of a client by residing temporarily in the household where the murder took place, he promptly consulted Squires Companion to the British Pharmacopoeia. Then he supplied himself with persulphate of iron and calcined magnesia, to mix together into an antidote, should the necessity arise. I twitted him about that, confident that no one would end up poisoned under my eye. He did me the courtesy of not returning the favor when it turned out that the person who got poisoned was me. 

**Author's Note:**

> beta thanks to livia_penn


End file.
